Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

The purpose of this topic is to have a place to put things that come to mind that, well, don't really appropriately belong anywhere else in this forum except in my dark age hovel.

If there's anything I put into this hovel that is felt should go into another thread, let me know and will post it there.

[Higgenbotham]

There are a lot of news articles hitting my inbox about the so-called "tripledemic". It's the triple whammy of flu, covid, and RSV, I believe.

Several months ago, I mentioned having had covid and in my case and in the case of my 2 year old, it was mild. My wife showed no symptoms. We were not tested but think we caught it from a family that had confirmed covid. For me, it was like a cold but felt different enough to think it was something else.

Anyway, in July, my wife wanted to put our daughter into day care to get more experience being around other kids. She was born 2 months before covid hit. I'll discuss the aspects of day care that don't relate to this later.

On her second day of day care she came home with the flu and it started right after she got home. This was July 8. I caught it 2 days later and, as usual, my wife didn't get it. My wife has never had the flu in her entire life. The flu was very severe and this was the sickest my daughter had ever been. It was the worst flu I had every had with maybe one exception. Neither of us needed any medical care. Recovery was slow but we mostly got over it before the next thing hit. Toward the end of it my right ear plugged (that is my weakness) but it only stayed plugged a couple days before it cleared.

Next came something else. It started as a cold but became much worse. For the first time in my life I found out what having sinus pressure and sinus infection is like. One night the pressure was so great I had to sleep partially sitting up. About that time, my daughter's breathing became noisy at night and stayed that way through the next illness, which hit almost immediately. Instead of not being sick at all, my wife had some slight congestion. She wasn't really sick, but wasn't 100 percent either. Again, we mostly got over it without any medical treatment but the recovery wasn't as complete.

Then came the third one. It started as just a slight cough and seemed like nothing to worry about. Then about day 5 or 6 it got a lot more serious. In my daughter's case, she woke up in the middle of the night with a fit of coughing. We sat her up in the bed and she would cough furiously, then freeze with chills. There were several cycles of that before it ended, maybe lasting 30 minutes. I followed her 2 days later and for the first time in years started taking cough medication. The bottle of cough syrup in the closet expired in 1998 and was mostly full so that tells you about how often I am sick. I emptied it during this illness. Also, during this third illness both my ears plugged and are still not completely unplugged 2 months later. My daughter's breathing noise at night has improved a lot but is still not completely normal

Again, during this third illness none of us required any medical care. But finally I told my wife that we need to disenroll this kid from day care because the next one she catches could put somebody in the hospital. My wife agreed, not reluctantly. I gave them notice and took her out immediately even though we had to pay for another 30 days. When I went to the day care to take her out and told them why, the assistant director said, "I don't blame you." That was late September and I think they knew something unusual was going on, but didn't know what. We didn't either.

I was never so naive as to think that because covid didn't affect me much, nothing would. For some who were not impacted much by covid, this "tripledemic" could be a lot worse.

[Higgenbotham]

I feel sorry for you guys. At my Methuselean age, I'm not going to be
around to see how this mess unravels (at least I hope I won't). But
most of you guys are going to be unlucky enough to see what happens.
I feel bad for you. As Higgie once described it, the living will envy
the dead.

I haven't yet found myself wishing I was never born, but believe that is coming. I'm sure you will be in my thoughts when it does.

In the spring of 2000, after escaping the siege of Grozny, and then Chechnya (a country whose independence was now gone), I found myself in Nazran, being aggressively pursued by the Russian army, GRU, and FSB. I will never forget standing on a slope at the edge of Nazran and looking at a large bird in the sky. How I wished I could be that bird. And I remember wishing that I had never been born. The feeling, that feeling, is horrible. Words cannot describe it. Wishing that you have never been born is an absolute nightmare, the blackest of all thoughts. I would rather die than feel that way again. To really wish that you had never been born is also a feeling you will never forget. And a feeling you never want to experience.

Thank you, Guest. I am making my comment over here because it relates less to abortion than the comments you and other posters have made.

There were two experiences I have had in my life, and only two, that I have described as passing through a veil. Both involved death and birth. The first was the death of my first parent and the second was the birth of my first child. After both experiences, I can clearly recall going back to my normal routine and being consciously aware that somehow the world and my place in it had irrevocably changed. Through that, I've come to think that humans are covered with many veils and it is through coming face to face with birth and death that those veils are lifted. Facing your own death is as close as it can come and I can imagine how your world was irrevocably changed when this happened.

Collectively speaking, it may be the experiences of many people coming face to face with their own deaths during a crisis era that is the only way veils that are covering a society can be passed through.

[Guest]

What would a new dark age look like at street level?

[Higgenbotham]

What would a new dark age look like at street level?

Maybe I can post updates and new thoughts in addition to what I've posted on that topic over the years.

I previously predicted big box will be gone. This article I read today addresses that and gives some details on how and why that might happen.

Walmart CEO warns company will close stores if theft doesn't slow down

Story by btobin@insider.com (Ben Tobin) • Yesterday 2:47 PM

© Provided by Business Insider

Doug McMillon told CNBC that theft is 'higher than what it has historically been' at stores
He said that along with stores closing if theft doesn't slow down, prices could be higher
Reuters previously reported that Walmart loses roughly $3 billion in theft each year


Walmart CEO Doug McMillon issued a stark warning Tuesday: If theft does not slow down, the retailer will close stores across the country.

"Theft is an issue," he told CNBC. "It is higher than what it has historically been."

He added: "If that's not corrected over time, prices will be higher, and/or stores will close."

McMillon did not say during the interview how much money Walmart has lost in stolen items this year. Walmart did not immediately reply to an Insider request for that number.

But the world's largest retailer likely loses about 1% of its US revenue — or roughly $3 billion every year — to stealing by customers and employees, Reuters reported in 2015.

McMillon said the key to reducing theft is Walmart working with local law enforcement agencies and ensuring that those agencies are fully staffed.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail giant is not the only retailer that has recently sounded the alarm on theft.

Missing inventory has reduced Target's gross margin by more than $400 million in 2022 compared with last year, and Target expects those profit losses to grow to $600 million by the end of the fiscal year, Target CFO Michael Fiddelke said in November during a company earnings call.

Target predominantly blamed the inventory shrink on organized crime.

"Along with other retailers, we've seen a significant increase in theft and organized retail crime across our business," Target CEO Brian Cornell said during the earnings call.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... 8d70578f93


Another would be that the coming financial collapse is seen to be a lot worse than if it had been allowed to run to completion after the 2008 collapse. That's been discussed but now the mainstream is admitting it too.

'It'll wipe out every dollar in the world' - new crash fears as $80 trillion 'goes missing'
Story by Harvey Jones • 9h ago

This warning does not come from some headline-grabbing doomsayer but arguably the most respectable financial body of all, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). This is a body of central bankers based in Basle, Switzerland.

BIS is known as "the central banker's banker", an umbrella body for august institutions such as the Bank of England, US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank.

Its researchers can predict financial crises three years in advance using machine learning to aggregate predictions from different models.

Now they are warning of a crash the scale of which we have never seen before, with a staggering $80trillion (£65trillion) at stake.

To put that into perspective, the global financial crisis was triggered by the collapse of Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

That was the largest corporate bankruptcy in US history but its debts totalled "just" $619 billion. That is less than one percent of the sums at stake today.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/i ... skbarhover

[Guest 03]

Will it be Mad Max?

[guest]

Will it be Mad Max?

It will be in the cities...

Get out of the cities while you still can. At least have a bug out location. Once it stars, most will be dead in a few weeks. Hide for a year, and you will probably be ok.

[Higgenbotham]

Will it be Mad Max?

A Dark Age (which the world is now irreversibly entering into) is a time when long standing scores that have not had a chance to be settled for decades or centuries are finally settled once and for all. There are many types of scores that will be settled (including racial scores on both sides), and as nation states collapse and descend into chaos every imaginable type of score will be settled. There will be men screwed over in divorce settlements killing ex wives and judges. There will be ex employees killing former employers and coworkers who screwed them over and their families. There will be roving local gangs killing every person of the opposite race they can get their hands on and raping their women. There will be killing for food and there will be cannibalism of children of people that are hated. Mostly, those who perceive they have been held down will kill those who they perceive to have held them down. Those who hold power now will find themselves without any and they will pay the price.

I'm looking forward to Mad Max. I have scores to settle.

Yes, many do and many will. Something I wrote in 2013 on this forum: "...a breakdown allows folks who have grievances either as individuals or as part of a group to settle long standing scores that the presence of the rule of law did not allow them to settle."

H - is it fair to believe that the ruthless and bloodthirsty individuals that you refer to are LAPD and their ilk, or is it government employees in general?

The brief scenario I painted assumes the central government comes apart financially and control devolves to the local level. In that case it would be the LAPD and their ilk. In certain areas they would become the government.

Then to the other points, a breakdown allows folks who have grievances either as individuals or as part of a group to settle long standing scores that the presence of the rule of law did not allow them to settle. I can imagine government employees being targets once they lose the backing of the state.

Here's an example of a guy I knew who probably has a few scores to settle. I met him when he was about 20 and saw he could do the work of 3 people. So I said, hey, tell you what, I'll pay you $5 per hour to do what I can do in an hour. We did that and he made good money. Point is, he was stronger than an ox, etc.

One day I went over to his apartment and he said, well, I can't work for awhile because I'm going to jail. I said why is that. He took me over to the stairwell and said I threw a guy down these stairs because he stole one of my tapes - he had it in his pocket on the way out and I caught him.

So then the next thing he said was the rule I go by is when anybody screws me over I do at least 10 times the damage as they did to me. He's a Gen X-er of course.

The other day I wondered what ever happened to him. It didn't take long to find 3 or 4 pictures of him on the Internet listed as a "sex offender" because he had sex with his 15 or 16 year old girlfriend when he was about 20, which was like 25 years ago. I knew that, and when I looked at his photos this thought flashed through my mind: if law and order breaks down several somebodies are going to be dead because those pictures got posted.

Once cities (like San Bernardino) are bankrupt and dissolved this is what I think can happen, over time, as the Baby Boomers die off. When city officials say load your guns and lock your doors (as recently did happen in San Bernafdino) because we are broke, the gangs have a void to step into.

[Higgenbotham]

I don't want to do too much repetition of old posts unless there is something new that comes along to verify or add to a previous post.

The news about Wal-Mart today does that and I could have brought up several old posts about big box and retail theft, then put the Wal-Mart news on top of that.

The most relevant ones being:

Other Store Expenses. Other store expenses increased by $57.3 million, to $227.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2022, as compared to $170.1 million in 2021, due to increases of $41.4 million and $15.2 million in the Acima and Rent-A-Center Business segments, respectively, primarily attributable to higher customer stolen merchandise loss rates, as discussed further in the section “Segment Performance” below.

Operating Profit. Operating profit decreased by $59.0 million, to $11.0 million for the three months ended March 31, 2022, as compared to $70.0 million in 2021, primarily due to the increases in other store expenses...

Merchandise Losses. Merchandise losses consist of the following:

Three Months Ended
March 31 2022 2021 (in thousands)
Customer stolen merchandise(1)
$ 99,742 $ 56,588

(1)Increase in customer stolen merchandise in 2022 is primarily due to the increase in customer stolen merchandise loss rates for the three months ended March 31, 2022 compared to the corresponding period in 2021, as described in the Results of Operations section above. In addition, the increase is partly attributable to the timing of the acquisition of Acima Holdings on February 17, 2021, resulting in a partial period of losses for the first quarter of 2021.

http://content-archive.fast-edgar.com/2 ... 220331.htm

First Quarter Segment Highlights

Acima Segment: Skip/stolen losses were 12.6% of revenue in the first quarter of 2022 compared to 8.6% in the prior year period on a pro-forma basis.

Rent-A-Center Business Segment: Skip/stolen losses were 3.9% of revenue in the first quarter of 2022 compared to 2.7% in the prior year period.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/rent-center-i ... 00425.html


I think Wall Street will whistle past the graveyard on that or similar.

Target: 'Organized retail crime' has driven $400 million in extra profit loss this year

Brian Sozzi·Anchor, Editor-at-Large

Wed, November 16, 2022 at 5:31 AM·3 min read


Target stores are getting looted, and it's taking a huge bite out of profits.

The discount retailer told reporters on a call to discuss its third quarter earnings results that inventory shrinkage — or the disappearance of merchandise — has reduced its gross profit margin by $400 million so far in 2022 compared to 2021.

"At Target, year-to-date, incremental shortage has already reduced our gross margin by more than $400 million vs. last year," Target CFO Michael Fiddelke said on the earnings call, "and we expect it will reduce our gross margin by more than $600 million for the full year."

Fiddelke detailed how there are "a handful of things that can drive shrink in our business and theft is certainly a key driver. We know we're not alone across retail in seeing a trend that I think has gotten increasingly worse over the last 12 to 18 months. So we're taking the right actions in our stores to help curb that trend where we can, but that becomes an increasing headwind on our business and we know the business of others."

A Target spokesperson told Yahoo Finance via email after the call the shrinkage was mostly specifically attributed to "organized retail crime."

https://news.yahoo.com/target-organized ... 06396.html

The problem is this isn't the 1920s or 1930s. Whether there was deflation as in the US or hyperinflation as in Weimar, the sole proprietor had nowhere to go and kept his business open with reduced throughputs and lower income. The large corporate retail businesses that exist today don't operate on that model. With reduced thoughputs they lay off and close units. When enough units are closed the fixed overheads are too high to make profit. A sole proprietor can survive a 50% contraction of throughput but a mega corporation can not make a profit at some percentage of contraction and the wealthy owners can be fine with closing the doors because they don't need the business to survive and have no incentive to keep losing money.

My prediction 2 years ago as you quoted was that some of the big box units would get recycled in this manner after a bankruptcy. Since then, a lot of damage has been done to the economy with QE2, etc. My initial reaction is to say it will be impossible to get a reconstitution of big box retail in most or all US metro areas due to the damage inflicted over the past 2 years. More likely is that most US cities will decay and crumble, and most big box structures will be abandoned.

No need I can see to change this view from October 14, 2011. The actions since have made this a certainty. This specifies the effect that mann described, which I would term the inability to reconstitute. The wasting process Bernanke has employed has had 4 effects - depletion of savings to reconstitute, depletion of time to reconstitute due to the aging of the population, depletion of knowledge to reconstitute, and depletion of opportunities to reconstitute as the general economy has become more unsound and unstable.

[Guest]

Target: 'Organized retail crime'

Flash mobs...